


All This Love Nonsense

by formerlydf



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 21:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7730269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/pseuds/formerlydf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Students just out of their first year at university can be alarmingly oblivious sometimes, but sometimes you need a few clues to get you where you need to be.</p><p>Five conversations Hazel Wells has on the way to realizing that she and her best friend might be more than just friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All This Love Nonsense

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mardia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardia/gifts).



> A modern AU. Thanks so much to stepquietly for letting me ramble at her/looking this over and croissantkatie for talking me down in my panic and telling me everything would be okay.
> 
> Title is from The Case of the Blue Violet:  
>  _'Aren't people soppy when they get old?' I asked. 'All this love nonsense. I'm sure I don't understand it. Don't fall in love, will you?'_  
>  _'Of course I won't,' said Hazel._

**1\. London, end of term**

“Roger Aston,” Daisy sputtered. “Roger Aston! I can’t believe it!”

Hazel fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Daisy, we were just talking.”

“ _Roger Aston_ ,” Daisy said again, as if only repetition could truly convey the depths of her disapprobation. “I thought you had better taste than that, Hazel. Even Alexander wasn’t as bad as this.”

“Daisy,” Hazel sighed. They’d solved the Alexander issue five years ago, but it had never fully died, even after Alexander and George had finally got over themselves and started dating. Hazel thought sometimes that Daisy liked being reassured again. “You know it wasn't like that with Alexander.”

“But it is with Roger Aston?”

“ _Daisy_ ,” Hazel said. Daisy didn't look at all abashed. “He wanted to know if I was staying in London for the summer. Sometimes people can have conversations without it meaning anything, you know, we’re not living in a regency novel.”

What she wouldn't tell Daisy — what she would barely even admit to herself, at her most honest — was that she thought perhaps he had been flirting, and she hadn't minded. People at university were obsessed with kissing, but there seemed to be just as much of an intangible bubble around Hazel as there had been at boarding school. She liked not having to deal with the constant dramatics of it, but it wasn't terrible having someone decent and attractive seem like they wanted her, even if she didn't want them back.

“Decent” was key, of course. Not that she wanted to start dating Roger Aston, but he at least seemed to see her as a person-shaped collection of thoughts and opinions rather than a person-shaped representation of Asia as a monolith.

“I should hope not,” Daisy said. “And certainly not with him.”

“He’s nice enough.” That was, in fact, precisely what Roger was: Enough. Handsome enough, nice enough, smart enough, friendly enough. Daisy, who lived on the spectrum between _exceedingly_ and _too much_ , didn’t understand him on principle. “Anyway, you told Violet Darby that Ed Higgins was probably alright just because he knew poetry and had a car, so I don’t see what you suddenly have against Roger.”

“Well, that’s fine for Violet, isn’t it?” Daisy asked. “But you’d be bored silly within a week.”

Which was true, anyway, and even if it _was_ just Daisy being possessive of her time — no matter how many times in the past five years Hazel had reminded her that they were still best friends and Detective Society forever — it still felt nice and warm that Daisy thought she deserved more than just anyone.

 

**2\. Hong Kong, summer**

Hazel had wondered if returning home to Hong Kong from her first year at university would feel different from all those times returning home after boarding school, but it hadn’t at all. There was the same fluster of hellos and hugs and unpacking, and her mother made sure that they had all Hazel’s favorite foods in the house, and it took about two days before she was really through with the jet lag.

It was easier to call it all jet lag: waking up at the wrong time, expecting different birdsongs outside the window or different sounds on crowded streets or a different texture to the air, turning around with a comment for Daisy and finding her sisters there instead, waiting for the back of her mind to catch up with where the rest of her was. She’d never expected, when she first left for England, that it would take time to remember how to be home.

On the third day, she slipped into her father’s study, curling up with a book while he sat at his desk and worked. They’d done this for years, especially after her sisters were born and the study became the quietest room in the house. Now her sisters were older than she had been when they were born, but the study was still the place she shared with her father, whether they were working on puzzles together or near-silently absorbed in their own endeavors.

His study was all dark wood and smooth surfaces. When she was growing up, it was the most magical room she knew. It certainly wasn’t a place she would disturb by texting, but her phone kept lighting up with messages from Daisy until she turned her notifications off.

“Your school friends?” her father asked, after she’d finally turned the phone screen-side down.

“Daisy,” she said. “I think her summer has been quiet so far.”

“Ah yes,” her father said dryly. “And we know how she feels about that.”

Hazel hid a smile in her hand. Her father wasn’t quite charmed by Daisy the way that all of the adults in England were, but he’d become reconciled to her after that first trip five years ago. He still didn’t love the idea that they were going around getting in and out of trouble, because he was her father and he worried about things he couldn’t control, but he hadn’t even suggested that Hazel live in a hall of residence at university instead of with Daisy.

He’d told Hazel, before she left, that he was proud of the person she’d become.

Now the pause hung for a moment before her father said, with an undecipherable tone in his voice, “So you’re enjoying university, then. And London.”

“I am,” Hazel said honestly. She had worried that she would feel out of place, tucked in the middle of London with half her life spent around the world and the other half spent at a posh boarding school, but it turned out that London was full of people who didn’t fit one box or another, who went between too many homes and not enough. Besides, there was Daisy. It was hard to feel out of place when you knew you always had a best friend nearby.

“Hazel,” her father began, and then paused.

“What is it?” she asked when nothing else seemed forthcoming.

After a moment, her father said, “Your mother will understand, if you don’t come back to Hong Kong to live. She might not like it, but she’ll understand.”

 

**3\. New York, summer**

Hazel had expected the introduction to end as it usually did, with Daisy waving a hand and saying, “And this is Hazel,” as if that encapsulated everything that needed to be said. For Daisy, it rather seemed to. If Daisy were someone else, she might have taken the trouble to clarify, “And this is Hazel, my best friend,” but for Daisy, the “best friend” bit wasn’t nearly as important as “Vice-President of the Detective Society,” and Daisy was still rather cagey about describing them as detectives to anyone who wasn’t already sufficiently impressed by her and couldn’t be sworn to silence on pain of medieval tortures. It might sound silly, two 19-year-old students claiming to be detectives when they were barely out of school, and Daisy hated when people saw her as silly. So instead, Hazel was just Hazel, nothing more or less.

Now Daisy said, “And this is Hazel, my fiancée.”

It was only by dint of long exposure to Daisy’s off-the-cuff lies that Hazel kept from gaping at her. “Hello,” she said instead, as politely as she could.

“Um,” said the boy in the lobby. He’d been talking with Hazel quite naturally before Daisy showed up, at least once he’d got past hearing her accent come out of someone with her face. Americans, she had found, either expected her to have an American accent or a Chinese one. Occasionally she was tempted to pretend to be French just to see the reaction.

Nobody ever looked quite as surprised by Daisy’s accent. Daisy talked like an actress on the BBC, which Americans seemed to find perfectly reasonable, because Daisy looked like a great many actresses on the BBC. Hazel also had an accent indicative of very expensive British boarding schools, but there were very few people on the BBC who looked and sounded like her. Perhaps on Bake-Off, if she was lucky that season.

“And you are?” Daisy asked.

“Oh,” the boy said, seeming quite as stymied as Hazel herself. He kept blinking, his eyes flicking repeatedly from Hazel’s face to her left hand, then her right hand, then over at Daisy to do the same. “I’m James. I mean, I didn’t —”

“The ring’s a family heirloom, of course, it’s being resized right now,” Daisy said matter-of-factly. “I proposed in England before we left. It was very romantic.” She reached out for Hazel’s hand and held it quite naturally, as if this was something they did all the time instead of Daisy grabbing her arm to drag her into closets or across roofs.

“Wow,” James said, his voice starting to regain its solidity. “Cool. I mean. Congrats?”

“Daisy,” Hazel said quickly. “James was just saying that he knows Caroline.”

“Oh?” Daisy asked, and let Hazel turn the conversation back to their investigation.

-

Ten minutes later, when they left the lobby, Hazel asked, “Daisy?”

“Yes?”

“What you said just now, to James —”

“About the security system?”

“About being engaged.”

“Yes, wasn't that clever?” Daisy said quickly. “I thought that, of course, we don’t know if Hannah disappearing had anything to do with her dating Caroline, but if it _did_ , we might find out something if they thought that we — if we were together. It might help.”

There was a sort of logic there, in a roundabout way, but Daisy didn’t usually trip over her words like that when she was telling people what she thought they should have already figured out. Perhaps she’d thought James was bothering Hazel, and wanted to warn him off; it wasn’t the first time, although she usually settled for bludgeoning them with icy politeness. Then again, perhaps she really did mean it for the case, and had only just realised that if Hannah’s disappearance _did_ have anything to do with being a lesbian, she might have just put both of them in danger.

Well, they’d been through worse things.

“But why did you say we were engaged?” Hazel asked. “Won’t that seem more odd?”

“Exactly,” Daisy said. “He might have thought we were lying if we said we were just dating, but who would lie about being engaged at nineteen? If I were going to lie I’d choose something much less noteworthy.”

“I suppose,” Hazel said.

Daisy glanced at her quite suddenly, and then looked back towards the sidewalk. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Did Hazel mind? Pretending they were engaged was hardly on the same level as climbing up a drainpipe for an investigation, and she’d done that before at least twice. Possibly being in danger from a threat that might not even exist barely even rated. It wasn’t a hardship to hold hands with Daisy, or to kiss her on the cheek. They’d been making plans for their future together for years.

“No,” Hazel said, “I don’t mind.”

“Well. Good,” Daisy said. “Although obviously if I were proposing to you I’d have had the ring resized beforehand. It’s not as if I don’t know your ring size.”

“Do you really?” Hazel asked. Even she wasn't totally certain of her ring size.

“Of course. I notice these things, you know,” Daisy said.

“I know,” Hazel said, and smiled.

 

**4\. WhatsApp, summer**

From: Alexander  
So???? What happened?

> From: Hazel  
>  I just woke up!

From: Alexander  
6 hour time difference! I can’t believe you left me hanging like that

> From: Hazel  
>  I’m writing you an email right now — I think it’s a little long for WhatsApp and it’ll be faster if I’m typing with 10 fingers anyway. Daisy’s uncle says I can’t tell you all of it though, some of it’s complicated.

From: Alexander  
Like the train was complicated?

> From: Hazel  
>  Just like. But Hannah’s fine.

From: Alexander  
How does this keep happening to you????

> From: Hazel  
>  I don’t know! Daisy loves it but sometimes I find it unnerving.
> 
> From: Hazel  
>  But if dangerous or complicated things are going to be happening, I guess I’d rather know than not know? Because at least if I know, then I can try to help fix things.

From: Alexander  
I think that makes sense

> From: Hazel  
>  Sending the email now.

…

…

…

From: Alexander  
WOW

From: Alexander  
George is going to be so jealous

> From: Hazel  
>  George has spent half the summer on a boyfriends holiday with you in Spain doing who knows what

From: Alexander  
oh trust me Wong I KNOW what ;P

From: Alexander  
Sorry, that was George. He’s in the shower now.

From: Alexander  
Anyway you know how he is about you and Daisy always finding the most interesting cases

From: Alexander  
But what’s this part about you two being engaged??

> From: Hazel  
>  I told you about that!

From: Alexander  
YOU DEFINITELY DIDN’T.

> From: Hazel  
>  We’re not actually engaged, Daisy’s just been telling people we are this whole time to see if they acted differently to us. She thought it might have something to do with what happened to Hannah
> 
> From: Hazel  
>  Caroline just got confused.

From: Alexander  
Are you sure?

> From: Hazel  
>  I think I’d know if I was engaged, Alexander

From: Alexander  
Okay but

From: Alexander  
Never mind

> From: Hazel  
>  What?

From: Alexander  
Do you like her?

From: Alexander  
Not just as your friend

> From: Hazel  
>  She’s my best friend

From: Alexander  
I know

From: Alexander  
Maybe I’m just biased because I fell in love with my best friend, but you guys are kind of intense about each other. She doesn’t like sharing you.

> From: Hazel  
>  That’s just Daisy

From: Alexander  
That’s what I mean

From: Alexander  
And you’re always happier when she’s around

From: Alexander  
I just think I wouldn’t suddenly pretend to be engaged to someone unless part of me wanted to be engaged to someone? Idk, ignore me.

 

**5\. London, summer**

A little over a year ago, when they were finishing up at Deepdean, Hazel had been scared of her future. She’d got her university acceptances, like they all had — even poor Beanie, whose dyslexia had always made lessons so hard — but suddenly everything in her life that had once seemed certain was slipping away. Soon there would be no more Deepdean routine; she’d have professors she’d never met before and all the friends she’d so carefully made over the past several years would be off to different places to form new routines and meet new people. They’d all still be friends, but it couldn’t help but be different.

And then Daisy had come in with her own pile of possible futures and said, “University College London has the best criminal justice program, and London will be far more interesting than being stuck out in Cambridge or Oxford, anyway,” because only Daisy could make going to Oxbridge sound like an imposition. “And I know they have halls of residence, but I talked to someone Daddy knows and I’ve got a line on a flat nearby, which should be loads nicer.”

She had said all that and she had waited, and after a second Hazel realised that Daisy was waiting on a response — that she was waiting and she was nervous, because she didn’t know that Hazel’s answer was always, immediately going to be yes.

Now Hazel said, “Daisy,” tucking her hands between her knees to keep from fidgeting.

“What is it, Hazel?” Daisy asked, taking a packet of biscuits out of a cabinet and waving it at Hazel questioningly. Hazel shook her head, and that of all things seemed to surprise Daisy into seriousness.

“I talked to Caroline before we left New York,” Hazel blurted out. “You know she said that everyone thinks we’re dating anyway? That’s why she tried so hard to get us to join all those groups, when we first started school.”

“Oh?” Daisy asked, freezing in place.

Hazel took a deep breath, and bludgeoned on. “I was thinking about Roger Aston, and I realised that if he’d been flirting with you instead of me, I wouldn’t have liked it either. And we already live together, and I think even my family knows that I want to keep living with you after we graduate, and — and you’re my favorite person in the world, you know.”

“ _Hazel_ ,” Daisy said, dropping the packet of biscuits to the floor. Within barely a second she was directly in front of Hazel, her hands hovering over Hazel’s shoulders — that field hockey speed, Hazel thought inanely.

“You could have just asked,” Hazel said, and leaned up to kiss the smile off Daisy’s face.

-

“You know,” Hazel said much, much later, “you told me not to fall in love, when we were fourteen.”

“Well, Detective Society is alright, of course,” Daisy said comfortably, like a tension that had been weighing on her for years was completely gone. “We won’t be nearly as ridiculous as other people get when they’re in love.”

“Detective Society forever,” Hazel murmured, winding her arm around Daisy’s waist.

“Detective Society forever,” Daisy agreed, and kissed her cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> I was so excited to get matched on the Wells and Wong series! I love Hazel and Daisy so much, and I loved getting the chance to play around in their world a little bit; I even came up with an actual plot for the missing-person case they mention in the middle of the fic, which may actually see the light of day at some point.
> 
> I hope you liked it!


End file.
